Cornwall CAMRA chairman, Bob Bunce, presents the award for county pub of the year to Matt Reay, manager of The Front, Falmouth It’s a spring Saturday afternoon and I’m drinking a 5.6% ABV Joe’s Cider, from the Purbeck Cider Company, at the Falmouth...

I am sitting in the HAND Bar, in Falmouth, an Aladdin’s cave of keg beer, with a gang of brewers from local Verdant and visiting Cloudwater. They have been working on a collaboration during the day and I’ve asked what it is, to be given the answer:...

On the first proper spring day, and in a lovely beer garden in just a t-shirt (well, not just a t-shirt — that wouldn’t be great for anybody), it seems counter-intuitive of me to be enjoying a 6.66% ABV beer that rich, roasty and black as night. But Exmoor Beast...

It was only October 26 last year when I ran the story revealing the plan to open the Beer Merchants Tap, in Hackney Wick, London. Fewer than four months later, the project has been crowdfunded and the venue is open. And no, it doesn’t look hurried. In fact, it...

At the end of Simon Treen’s tutored tasting, at Skinner’s Old Ale House, in Truro, yesterday, he asked for a quick show of hands on which of the five beers he presented were people’s favourite. It wasn’t a scientific test, and indeed the...

James Beeson’s blog piece, An Ode to the Great British Pub, is not, as he says, “a weepy-eyed, rose-tinted spectacled elegy to the public house”, but it does make a number of points about the institution with which it is hard not to disagree, least...

There’s a lovely cartoon I saw the other day where a fella is stood in his new commercial premises, explaining his business plan to his friend. He says: “I’m going to run it as a gym for the first two weeks of the year, then turn it into a...

XT Brewing, of Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire, held a Trappist beer tasting in its brewery tap last week. The brewery’s Russ Taylor says the event was a great success, and here offers his guide to the monks behind the beers, and the brews themselves… The...

Guest blog by Russ Taylor, XT Brewing Co Carl Fitzpatrick, of BBBirra, checks his hops Last summer at XT we brewed a Belgian wit beer, the Animal Donkey, with innovative and eccentric Italian Brewery BBBirra, from Bosa. The beer was made with wheat and loads of...

Sunday in Bude – glorious autumn sun, rolling waves, but it’s a different sort of barrel I’m here for. It’s the middle of the afternoon and the Barrel at Bude micropub is filled to capacity. Acoustic singer guitarist Michael Guild is captivating the drinkers, but the...

It was a stormy Saturday afternoon. Storm Brian was coming in and, as it happens, would not have too much impact on our part of west Cornwall, but the prospect was enough to deter me from a second visit to the excellent Falmouth Beer Festival, where I had enjoyed...

To The Front, in Falmouth, where brewer Simon Treen and his wife, Sarah, are revealing the new line-up of Treen’s Brewery beers after the initial launch of the Cuckoo and Cloud Cuckoo brews in 2016. It was busy. By ‘eck it was busy. But then Treen’s...